Age of Stupid

So I finally got back from skiing and finished up my other courseworks. Yay!! As suggested by Jon in the comments to my last post, I went to watch Age of Stupid. And I do agree that it is a brilliant show with many many quotable quotes (which I can't remember now, but I remember as I was watching it, thinking... yea.. true... or that's a really good way of putting it).

If you haven't watched the show, you can access it here:

Age of Stupid

Short Synopsis of the Movie
It is the year 2055, the world is destroyed by climate change. An archivist who had archived the world's events leading up to this disastrous year sits by the computer and starts revealing to the audience the human caused events that had created the dismal state of the earth as we see it. "We could have saved ourselves", he says sounding resigned. (Well of course he is resigned, humans are almost completely gone). We are then shown clips of different decisions people had made all through time till I suppose 2009 documenting key events that had captured the attention of humans. Interspersed within the documentary like movie are animations and future predictions that show the possible state of the world past what we know today, a result of what someone in the film termed as "The Age of Ignorance, the Age of Stupid". The movie ends with the archivist transmitting the video to "someone or something" out there so that they/it don't make the same mistakes again.

I remember that at the end of the movie, I felt all the despair that the archivist felt during the documentary. Sometimes I feel that way too, when I see how there has been no progress on the climate change front. I'm sure that there were many people who watched the show, watched the comments made by people in the show and thought to themselves, goodness, why are those people so ignorant. But I suppose we all are, in one way or another.

What is appealing about this show is the way it is framed as a flashback of human history, making it seem real and relevant to the viewer. This kind of genre of environmental film (mixing documentary and movie elements together) has become quite popular recently. They aim to provide a story that is both informative and entertaining at the same time.

There are a lot of pertinent points raised in this video
- the desire of the poor for the wealth of developed nations
- the insatiable desire of the developed nations for oil
- Melting ice caps
- the environmental exploitation of the poor (mostly for oil), that has locked them in a vicious cycle of poverty
- the reluctance of people in developed countries to embrace new technology and environmentally beneficial attitudes
- The lack of political will to create policies to conserve the environment
- Intergenerational justice

All the concerns that we have about the environment has been distilled into this environmental message film. It definitely got the message about the effects of climate change across to the audience.

And to the movie producers, it is all man-made. Sure there were instances where they supposed that some climate change could be the result of natural causes, but they attributed everything to human decisions and behaviour. The case study approach to the film also made it rather flimsy on scientific evidence, but I suppose they wanted the events to speak for themselves, rather than bore the audience out with facts on CO2 or water levels. I suppose what we get out of this film is that we OUGHT to be doing something to improve the way we live. It is not really a scientific documentary that provides us with facts about climate change.

While watching the film, I realised that a lot of the decisions made by the individuals in the film were not wrong. They were just all value judgements. And that is what climate change is all about - value judgements. Do we value our utility over that of our future generations? Is reducing poverty at the expense of the environment more important that saving the environment at the expense of poverty? Is it wrong to wish for a nice landscape instead of having to face a huge wind farm? We could have made all those decisions, but as viewers of the film, we may scoff at those people interviewed. We may belittle their intellect when the point of the film is to reflect the personal values and choices that we individuals have in our lives, and hopefully spur us to re-evaluate them and place environmental conservation somewhere closer to the top.

And this leads in slowly to the conclusion of my blog. Yes, I will make another blog post tomorrow, only because I simply HAVE to do something on the day that the assignment is due. (This is not last minute work, its work that always seems to drag out till the last minute because I won't stop working until something is due -.-)

ANYWAY

What I would like to point out through this post is that media portrayals of climate change are not only obscured by the camera lens, or by social policies and interests, but also by individual values. Climate change is filled with values and decisions that shape what we believe to be facts - how we collect data and interpret data, and then how we present it. Every stage of the process cannot be divorced by what we believe to be important. E.g. Believing that CO2 data from ice cores is more relevant than peets, leads us to treat CO2 data from ice cores with greater relevance, and hence when it is presented to the audience, we may only refer to such data even if data from other natural sources provide a slightly different story. Media distill facts, and when we watch a movie (or documentaries, or news reports) we must determine for ourselves what we assume to be the more important facts, and be honest with ourselves when we do so. It may be tiresome to keep analysing documentaries and film in a sort of bid to find loopholes in their arguement. Well then, don't think about it that way! It is not about finding loopholes, rather it is about analysing their arguement and weighing it against what you know, value and believe. That is what makes some documentaries more enjoyable than others, some films seem less ridiculous than others, and some news reports seem more authentic. :)